Tea Party Patriots View: Stop with the four-letter words already

Despite President Obama’s insistence that immigration reform be hustled through Congress before the end of the year, John Boehner, Speaker of the House of Representatives, squelched the notion when he said the issue was dead for this year.

“Thank goodness,” thought many in the tea party, who have been focusing their efforts on the repeal of Obamacare. To other groups, however, every day is a day to battle against immigration reform. That puts them in a face-to-face clash with our own Redlands State Senator Bill Emmerson.

Emmerson, along with 14 other California State legislative Republicans, sent a letter to Boehner calling for a vote on immigration reform.

This begs the question: Why would state Republicans, as opposed to Democrats, want to encourage a vote? Especially since there is a better-than-even chance that the approximately 11 million illegal immigrants in this country are more likely to become Democrats rather than Republicans.

Furthermore, 52 percent of Americans believe that immigrants are a burden on this country because they take jobs away from others and consume health care and welfare services, according to the Pew Research Center.

In their letter to Boehner, state Republicans mention providing legal clarity for millions in California who can become “an entirely new population of full taxpayers” spurring an “economic renaissance.”

We the People Rising, a Southern California activist group that opposes illegal immigration, determined to once again stand up for their beliefs. Joined by members of the California Coalition for Immigration Reform and the local Redlands Tea Party Patriots, they rallied in front of Emmerson’s office in Redlands on Wednesday, ignoring the light rain. As they enthusiastically waved “Stop illegal immigration” signs, equally enthusiastic motorists honked in support.

I confess I was appropriately intimidated by the police cars circling the rally and then by the four California Highway Patrol and Redlands police officers lining the doorway to the senator’s office as we trooped in to meet with him. The protestors’ purpose was to ask him to write a new letter to the California Republican congressional delegation in support of American workers and enforcement of the law, and to withdraw his signature from the previous letter.

Emmerson graciously heard out the earnest pleas of his constituents who described their personal experiences with becoming a naturalized citizen, watching our schools deteriorate, and experiencing losing jobs to illegals. It was especially heartbreaking to hear the story of Dominic Durden’s mother who told of her son being killed by an unlicensed illegal alien last year.

Advertisement

According to Robin Hvidston, executive director of We the People Rising, they have already visited four of the signers of the letter and would be visiting the rest of them asking them to rescind their signatures.

When it comes to immigration reform, however, here is one important consideration: “Federal comprehensive immigration reform” is a phrase that contains a nasty, vile four-letter word — “comprehensive.”

Any time a governmental body attempts to pass a “comprehensive” law such as Obamacare, both the intended and unintended consequences of a gargantuan law create well-observed massive problems for the people.

For example, the 900-plus pages of the Affordable Care Act, AKA Obamacare, turned into about 10,000 pages of regulations (as defined by The Washington Post’s Fact Checker).

I won’t bore you with their math, but according to ObamacareWatcher.org, reading at 200 words per minute, the Obamacare Regulations would take 180 hours to read. That’s four and a half 40-hour business weeks. No sensible person should be encouraging the passage of these monstrous bills.

In fact, in a change of public statement about the immigration law he was working on in the Senate, Sen. Marco Rubio said, “I still continue to believe, as I always have, that the best way to address immigration reform is in individual bills that build on each other sequentially.”

Any time a state legislator encourages a federal legislator to put a comprehensive bill to the vote, well… it is indeed time for him to support his constituents, not illegals, first, and to stop already with the four-letter words.

Marilyn Snyder is a member of the Redlands Tea Party Patriots. Contact her at PatriotMarilyn@gmail.com